I have to admit; I'm a bit spoiled. I have amazing and dear friends who have great taste and appreciate food, design, experiences and branding . This year, one of the gifts I received was a bar of Askinosie Chocolate. Not only is it beautifully packaged; it is some of the best chocolate I've ever had. In honor of the fact that we finished the last few squares last night after dinner, I thought I would share a bit about this chocolate so you can go out and enjoy it for yourself.

Askinosie Chocolate is a small company based out of Springfield, Missouri. One of the things that makes them unique is that they are the first small batch chocolate maker in the U.S. to press their own cocoa butter and are the only makers of natural cocoa powder. Perhaps also why I found their chocolate so divine...

The particular bar I was given was made of 75% Cocoa Beans from Soconusco, Mexico (this includes 1% Askinosie cocoa butter that they make with the same beans). Each of their batches of chocolate varies slightly because they experiment with texture. However, on each bars there is a Choc-o-lot # and if you enter it here you'll find out a number of goodies about your bar. My Choc-o-lot # was 102208.

I found out that my bar lived this life:

7/21/2008 the beans were shipped to our factory.
9/15/2008 beans were roasted to perfection bringing out all the flavors.
9/22/2008 cocoa liquor, sugar, and cocoa butter were mixed to make chocolate
9/22/2008 roasted nibs were mixed into a paste called liquor in our universal
10/22/2008 your product was packaged by hand.
3/27/2009 given as a birthday present to Dan and I
4/9/20009 no more chocolate. Sad

You can order directly from their website and even visit their factory.